COE freezes hiring of vice principals, support staff positions

The Public School System will implement a hiring freeze on its vice principal and support staff positions because of its meager budget for fiscal year 2012, according to Education Commissioner Dr. Rita A. Sablan.

She told Saipan Tribune yesterday that four vice principal posts have been put on hold as a result of budget constraints.

On top of the freeze hiring, she also made it clear to school principals that support staff posts will also not be filled this school year.

“We have frozen the vice principal positions for now because it’s very hard if we will freeze the school counselor positions which are providing important support for our students,” she said during a break in yesterday’s parents’ summit at Aqua Resort Club.

“I already communicated to all our schools and I made it very clear to the administrators that whenever they lose support staff, sorry.but those positions cannot be replaced or cannot be filled now due to budget concerns,” she said.

Public School System human resource director Coreen Palacios said that there are about 30 school administrators on Saipan, Tinian, and Rota. Of the number, 19 are principals and the rest are vice principals. She said the vice principal position is determined based on the per-school population.

However, in smaller campuses that have only a few hundred enrollees, the vice principal position is not being filled as long as there are enough school counselors on board.

Commissioner Sablan said the hiring freeze is PSS’ way of protecting every classroom teacher position.

According to Palacios, PSS currently has only about 500 classroom teachers, including new hires from on- and off-island.

Acting governor Eloy S. Inos signed into law Monday the fiscal year 2012 appropriations bill that gives a $30 million budget to PSS. This amount is $6 million short of what PSS had originally asked for but $2 million higher than the Executive Branch’s proposal of $28 million.

Sablan said that PSS will need to adjust its budget plan for this school year to reflect the $30 million allotment.

“I have to go back and work with my financial team and see how we can adjust or revise our budget to reflect the amount under the appropriation bill. I know we will be working with $30 million, so that’s my challenge and I think I will overcome that,” she said.

Although she described the $30-million budget as “workable and manageable,” Sablan sees particular concern with paying for utilities and sustaining the operational cost of school buses.